ATTENTION TOWN OF GAINES RESIDENTS

The Town Board is seeking candidates interested in serving on the Town of Gaines Zoning Board of Appeals.

The Zoning Board of Appeals meets on the second Tuesday of each month, as needed.  The Town pays a stipend for each meeting you attend.  Four hours of training is required each year.

 

Interested candidates may send a letter of interest to:

Supervisor Tyler Allport, 14087 Ridge Road, Albion, NY 14411 (or)

E-mail:  Supervisor@townofgaines.org

 

Please send letter of interest at your earliest convenience, or drop in the mail drop box at the Town Hall.

The regular May 2020 meetings of the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The May meeting of the Town Board has been rescheduled for May 18th. The meeting will be open to the public in accordance with any directives on building capacity or social distancing that are in place at that time.

As posted on the Town’s social media pages, Town business continues to be conducted behind the scenes. The Highway/Water Department is operating normally. The Town Clerk is working a regular schedule, however, the town offices are closed to the public. If you need services from the Town Offices, please contact the Town Clerk via phone at 585-589-4592 or via email at clerk@townofgaines.org

At this time, we intend to open the Town Hall at the end of the “New York on Pause” order, and follow whatever guidance is in place at that time.

Town Court will open at the direction of the New York State Office of Court Administration. This may not be in synchronization with Town Hall activities.

 

Please continue to utilize reliable sources for information on COVID-19. Here are your best resources for up-to-date information at the local, state, and national levels:

Orleans County Health Department COVID-19 Page

New York State Health Department COVID-19 Page

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Page

 

After a little over a year of effort by the Town Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Zoning Update Steering Committee, and our consultant, LaBella Associates, the Town Board passed Local Law 2 of 2019 on December 9, 2019, which replaces the old zoning ordinance, which were originally adopted in the early 1980s,  with a new set of regulations.

The new zoning regulations focus on enabling proper growth while protecting our agricultural and historical areas. The new regulations bring us up to current standards on zoning and ensure we are in alignment with relevant state laws and regulations. On of the largest changes to the zoning regulations is the re-establishment of the Planning Board.

The new zoning ordinance will go into effect upon filing with the New York State Department of State, and should be completed by December 20, 2019.

With the new regulations, the Town is seeking interested parties to volunteer to serve on the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals. We are taking letters or emails of interest until the end of the year, and will fill the boards during the Town Board 2020 Organizational Meeting on January 13, 2020.

A copy of the zoning regulations and zoning map are available on the “Forms, Applications, & Files” section of the website, with a link also below.

A big thank you to all of the people who volunteered their time and effort, as well as those who offered feedback and comments! Without the help from our residents, we would not have been successful in completing this important update.

Town of Gaines Zoning Regulations

Town of Gaines Zoning Map

The Zoning Steering Committee, which was established by the Town Board in 2018 and has been meeting since last fall, has completed the majority of their work. The next step for the committee, and our consultant, LaBella Associates, is a public informational meeting. This meeting will be held on August 5th, 2019 at 7:00 PM at the Town Hall. For interested parties, electronic copies of the draft of the revised Zoning Law, along with a revised Zoning Map, are provided here below.

All are welcome at the public informational meeting. The feedback received during this meeting will be reviewed and used by the committee and the consultant to make final revisions to the draft Zoning Law, which will then be sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals and Town Board for consideration. The Town Board is the entity which has the authority to adopt the proposed Zoning Law, and that will follow the normal process of having ample notice, along with a public hearing, before being enacted.

Town of Gaines – Zoning Law Update for Public Review – July 2019

Town of Gaines – Zoning Map Update (Draft)

On October 30, 2018, the Gaines Town Board held a budget workshop session to review the preliminary budget prepared by the Supervisor and move it forward in the budget process. (Approve it as the tentative budget).

A lot of work was put into the budget to keep taxes flat. The tentative budget is a very conservative one, both in expenditures and in estimates of revenue. One item of note for the 2019 Budget cycle is the reduction in the Assessment Equalization Rate by the State of New York from 100% to 98%. This has a net effect of lowering the assessed values in the town by about 0.64%. That equates to an instant tax increase without efforts to reduce the tax levy. We were able to prepare a budget that accounts for this and keeps taxes flat this year, even in the face of rising costs for salaries, fuel, salt, etc. If this budget is approved as it stands today, taxpayers in Gaines who reside within the Village of Albion will see a very slight reduction in the Town portion of their property taxes. Those outside the village will see the Town portion of their taxes stay flat – within pennies in fact – of last year’s values.

The Town of Gaines will go through an assessment revaluation in 2019, which will have the effect of raising our equalization rate back to 100%.

Attached to this post are the documents reviewed at the Budget Workshop Meeting, which includes the entire Tentative Budget for 2019.

The annual public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Thursday, November 8th, 2018 at 7:00 PM. At the conclusion of the public hearing, the Board will move directly into the regular November meeting.

Town of Gaines 2019 Tentative Budget

2019 Preliminary Budget Presentation